The Democratic primary for the governor of New Hampshire was a dumpster fire. Here's hoping Joyce Craig can recover...
I hate late primary elections. They extend the amount of time our candidates spend attacking one another and give little time for the fractures to heal. Flipping the New Hampshire governor’s seat now that Gov. Chris Sununu is retiring shouldn’t be hard. Yet after the bilge that was aired during the Democratic primary I’m not sure the hard feelings have entirely disappeared.
In the primary for governor, former Manchester mayor Joyce Craig and Executive Councilor Cinde Warmington are trading accusations over who has personally profited more from New Hampshire’s drug crisis.
Craig is criticizing Warmington for her work on behalf of oxycontin manufacturer Purdue Pharma as a lobbyist two decades ago and for serving more recently as a lawyer to a notorious New Hampshire-based pain clinic.
A recent Craig campaign ad accuses Warmington of “profiting off the opioid crisis” for more than 20 years.
Warmington, meanwhile, is criticizing Craig for having a financial stake in her husband’s law firm, which has advertised its work representing drug traffickers.
“It’s Joyce Craig, who is personally profiting from the defense of drug dealers trafficking oxycontin and cocaine,” a new Warmington ad alleges.
The ad also accuses Craig of “failed leadership” that made Manchester “the epicenter of the opioid crisis.”
It gets worse, as both candidates used GOP talking points to attack one another which should reaffirm those issues in the minds of voters.
Without policy differences, the two campaigns compensated with brass-knuckled attacks on each others’ personal records, launching the kinds of broadsides not often seen in Democratic primaries in New Hampshire.
In one television ad, Warmington assailed Craig’s leadership of Manchester, which she said had been riddled with concerns around homelessness and overdoses, mirroring the same attacks waged against Craig as Republicans.
Craig, meanwhile, approved of ads reminding voters of Warmington’s past legal and lobbying work for Purdue Pharma, the manufacturer of OxyContin whose business practices are now regarded as a key driver of the opioid crisis.
The intraparty attacks exposed political vulnerabilities for both candidates that raised risks of weakening them in the general election. Where Morse’s criticisms of Ayotte had been framed around the perception that she was not conservative enough for Republicans, Craig’s and Warmington’s attacks against each other were broad enough to potentially stick in the minds of independent voters.
The question for Joyce Craig, the wounded winner of the primary, is whether this dumpster fire fatally harmed her chances of winning.
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The governorship of New Hampshire has been held by the Republican Party since 2016. It will be a tight election in 2024 especially with the opponent being former Sen. Kelly Ayotte. We need to win the governor’s seat and break the majorities in the state legislature this year!
Joyce Craig for NH-GOV
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